Focus: Technology
Srikumar Misra
Sri Misra is a serial entrepreneur shaping the future of decentralized finance through aarnâ protocol, an AI-crypto platform creating the next generation web3 asset management stack to democratize access to the rapidly evolving world of digital assets. As the founder of Milk Mantra, India’s first VC-funded agri-food startup, Sri championed a new-age ethically sourced premium dairy products, gaining recognition as a practitioner of conscious capitalism. His innovative work has earned global media attention and features in top business school case studies. Previously a key member of the Tata Group’s elite TAS, Sri gained international experience in London and Johannesburg and spearheaded M&A in the consumer food & beverage sector. He…
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Orr Hirschauge
Orr Hirschauge is a journalist and news executive. He currently works as Chief Digital Officer at Israel’s largest daily newspaper, Israel Hayom. He was the first Israeli to join The Wall Street Journal as a technology staff reporter and the first executive editor of CTech, a now well-established Israeli English-language technology news site. His work on the juxtaposition of surveillance technologies and regional geopolitics is cited in policy papers and best-selling books. In 2016, Orr led an investigative project resulting in a series of reports on Israel’s use of predictive algorithms to stop terror attacks. He reported extensively on the growing footprint of China-based entities in Israeli tech and on…
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Ömür Kula Çapan
Ă–mĂĽr Kula Çapan is a well-known creative strategist and experience designer in Turkey who successfully managed pioneering companies like Tribal WW and R/GA Istanbul, leading the digital transformation of Turkey’s biggest brands and companies, and helped build Turkey’s first and most successful digital-only bank, Enpara. She is also a sought-after keynote speaker, columnist, and a guest lecturer for many universities. Alongside her successful career in the business world, her true passion lies in channeling this creativity for the transformation of societies for a better world. She has participated in the foundation of the Civic Involvement Projects of Sabanc? University, and helped to take the model nation-wide with the Open Institute’s…
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Kyriacos Koupparis
Kyriacos Koupparis is Head of the Hunger Monitoring Unit at the United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) where he and his team utilize data and emerging technologies to track global food security. Previously he was Head of Frontier Innovations at the UNWFP's Innovation Accelerator. In this role, he led a team that explored how emerging technologies – such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotics – can be harnessed to catalyze impact within the context of humanitarian assistance and food security. Previously, he worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as Senior Innovation Advisor where he designed and administered multi-million dollar programs to advance social and environmental prosperity…
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Henry Njoroge
Henry Njoroge works to expand Kenya’s information technology sector. He currently runs Xtranet Communications which aims to capture the growing opportunities arising out of the rapid growth of mobile telephony and fiber optic cable technology on the East African Coast. He hopes to provide employment to hundreds of jobless youth in Kenya through initiatives including call centers, outsourcing and business process engineering. He is also Chairman of the Kenya Youth Business Trust, a non-profit organization affiliated to Youth Business International, whose aim is to empower the poorest of the poor through entrepreneurship by giving microloans. Henry was previously CEO of UUNET and Openview Business Systems, and he has established and…
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Gavin Hood
Gavin Hood is currently the Chief of Staff at Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley software company that has developed the world's most advanced data integration and analysis capabilities. Palantir's technologies are used in the government and commercial sectors world-wide. Prior to joining Palantir in 2012, Gavin accumulated more than 14 years of front-line experience as a senior legal and policy adviser. In 2009-2012, he was the first UK legal adviser to the British Embassy in Washington, DC, where he advised on international legal and policy issues, focusing on the national security sphere. He has held a number of positions in the UK Foreign Office, including as the first legal adviser…
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Balázs László Karafiáth
Balázs "LászlĂł" Karafiáth, an economist by trade and one of Hungary’s best-known Internet entrepreneurs, is Strategic Director of in-Depth SOULutions, a professional training and coaching company based in Budapest. He previously ran Culture Culture Inc., a unique communications research and consulting enterprise. LászlĂł has been fascinated with culture since his teenage years and helped start one of Europe’s most popular week-long music and arts festivals, Sziget, when he was 20 years old. He was a radio host and DJ for 7 years at the opinion-leading Tilos community radio of Budapest. A serial entrepreneur, LászlĂł co-founded Darwin’s Marketing Evolution in 2003 in Budapest. Using meme science, the company works with Fortune…
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Salvatore Iaconesi
Salvatore Iaconesi was a designer, robotics engineer, artist, hacker, and Principal and Co-Founder of Art is Open Source, an interdisciplinary research laboratory focused on merging artistic and scientific practices to create better communities in the advent of emerging technologies. He was also President at the Human Ecosystems Relazioni Research Center, and Co-Founder of Nefula, Italy's first Near Future Design studio. A TED Fellow (2012) and an Eisenhower Fellow (2013), his work explored the growing intersection between sciences, technology, and art. As a way of commenting on and interacting with an ever-changing world, Salvatore produced video games, artificial intelligence, expert systems for business and scientific research, entertainment systems, mobile ecosystems, and…
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ElsaMarie D'Silva
ElsaMarie D’Silva is an Indian gender activist and is the Founder and CEO of Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) and is President of Red Dot Foundation Global. Safecity is a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. This data gets aggregated as hot spots on a map indicating trends at a local level. Since Safecity started in December 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India, Kenya, Cameroon and Nepal. ElsaMarie is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award, Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Niti Aayog’s #WomenTransformingIndia award and…
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Belva Devara
Belva Devara is CEO and Co-Founder of Ruangguru, the largest education technology enterprise in Southeast Asia, across Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. Ruangguru has impacted over 20 million K–12 students through high-quality learning videos, quizzes, and live tutoring on web and mobile platforms. Its affordable subscription cost allows for high student adoption across lower-income segments and in more rural regions. In addition, Ruangguru has served over 10 million lifelong learners through online professional courses and corporate training. With venture funding of over $205 million, Ruangguru is most recently included in the list of the 50 most innovative companies in the world by Fast Company, ranking #25 overall and #2 in…
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